“a bland, kind of gutless, neutered movie” - thecinemasnob.com
I
generally don’t include quotes from somebody else in my reviews, but
after leaving the theatre not sure how to describe what I just saw, I
think the above quote from popular web-based entertainer Brad Jones
pretty much sums up how I was feeling. World War Z was intended to capitalize on Max Brooks’ popular novel, and in the author’s own words is “World War Z in name only”.
This
film is a mess. It’s a PG-13 zombie film that consciously cultivates a
PG-13 audience while not consciously cultivating the idea of what a
zombie is. It blatantly throws out the mythology of Zombie Survival Guide and World War Z,
opting instead for something as high-octane as the dead can be. It is
also a suspenseful action movie with a likable protagonist doing his
best to get back to his family.
The
film stars Brad Pitt as Gerry , a former member of UNIT. The United
Nations independent military force with its own members that are not
drawn from other militaries does not actually exist, and as such has no
name. Since the film does not name it, I am making use of Doctor Who’s
name for such a force: The United Nations Intelligence Taskforce, which
is deployed against enemies that threaten the entire world and are
generally outside of the traditional human understanding of the world.
As such, I don’t particularly disagree with UNIT being deployed against
them, but I imagine I don’t have to go into detail as to why relying on
a completely unrelated setting that I just happen to know about in
order for me to reach that conclusion is necessary.
Gerry
has retired for the sake of being a father to his two girls, which will
be hereafter referred to as “the quiet one” and “the crying one”, if I
refer to them again. The opening is a day in the life - rather, a
birthday in the life - of the family, interrupted all of a sudden by
everything going off the walls crazy. I wish I could describe it
better, but I can’t. This begins a sequence of choppy editing, shaky
cameras, and altogether the film doing its best to substitute unnerving
the audience with rapid cuts in place of any sort of tension, suspense
or even gore. The film is intentionally avoiding the latter, which
works, but it does so by blatantly cutting away in obvious and painful
ways, which doesn’t. There was one scene where I was certain that Brad
Pitt didn’t have any more of an idea where he was than I was; forget the
zombies, the editor is the true danger here.
Still,
there were some good things to this scene. The sound is carefully
crafted, creating the illusion that a car crash in the film was so
powerful as to physically impact the audience and leave their heads
ringing. At the time, I thought that this was going to lead into the
injury or death of one of the characters - in fact, this would have been
an ideal time to kill off one of the girls, giving the remaining family
members something to connect over and fight for, not to mention that
this is the point where I stopped being able to tell the girls apart.
Instead, this is the part where it becomes clear that the Law of Main
characters has been applied to everyone in the car. The film is “safe”
from this point on, and never again is there any reason to actually
believe that Gerry, his wife or his children are actually going to be at
risk of death in apocalypse. Sure, the characters believe that they
are, but the events are telling an entirely different story. The
characters believe that they’re in something deep and serious, when in
reality the film is entirely aware that it is a summer blockbuster.
The rest of the film becomes a cross between Zach Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead and The Da Vinci Code.
The “zombies” are very much in the modern mold, although the dead do
not actually rise in this film. They’re referred to as “zombies” (and
as “rakshasa”) and referred to as being dead, but the only method of
conversion is by passing the infection along through a bite. None of
the zombies shown are in any way rotting, although I do have to give a
lot of credits to the actors portraying them in many scenes.
Gerry
spends the film traveling the world, finding clues as to where the
plague came from and how to stop it. In the meantime he witnesses
zombies overrun several strongholds. He’s fairly creative while finding
clues, if so far behind the audience that it almost seems as though the
solutions are so simple as to be clearly false. The cast picks up new
characters from time to time, but spends so little time on them that
it’s barely worth remarking that the only person Gerry’s family meets in
the Projects who knows English is the only person the film deems worthy
of surviving. He never has a scene worth keeping him alive for again,
so from a narrative standpoint he died along with his family.
When
the editing settles on a scene long enough for you to actually see it,
the sets are gorgeous. The walls around Israel are spectacular and give
a clue as to how an adaptation of Mira Grant’s Newsflesh
trilogy might look. Despite the fact that many of the effects are the
result of allegedly mindless zombies partaking in clearly intentional
plans to murder and destroy, that doesn’t stop them from being brilliant
in their own right.
Unfortunately,
there are just as many scenes of stupidity for the sake of suspense to
balance things out. The entire climax of the film hinges on the fact
that a roomful of smart people - scientists, veterans and administrators
- wouldn’t think to ask or answer a very simple and important question
prior to undertaking a mission where the knowledge is clearly necessary.
Which is a perfect example of what this film is like. The acting is
excellent, but you feel little for the characters when you can tell the
ending twenty minutes in. The effects are beautiful, but either the
cinematographer had cerebral palsy, the editor has the attention span of
a six year old Robin Williams, or both. The result is an average film
that was rewritten and reshot too much for its own good, a film that
seems to intentionally sacrifice quality for a rating with the only
excuse being that it couldn’t possibly profit on its ridiculous budget
with an R rated film.
World War Z
doesn’t know what makes a good PG-13 zombie movie, nor does it do much
to earn its title other than a very basic premise - and I can tell that
without having read the book. It’s the story of an audience stand-in
character that the military loves despite being solid not military in
any way, who is never at risk of death, while multi-million dollar
effects that only generally mesh with the plot play out around him,
cutting away from all the violent parts that might accidentally immerse
the audience in what was happening. In short, it’s a very good way to
see everything that is wrong with remake and adaptation culture as it
currently exists in the film industry.
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